Mr. Hamlin cleared his throat and Harriet started nervously.  Why was her father standing outside her door?  Had he learned of her bill to her dressmaker?

“I do not wish to disturb you, Harriet,” Mr. Hamlin began awkwardly.  “I only desired to know if I could do anything for you.”

“No, Father,” poor Harriet replied wearily.  As Mr. Hamlin turned away, she sprang up and started to run after him.  At her own door she stopped.  She heard her father’s stern voice giving an order to a servant, and her sudden resolution died within her.  A few moments later the front door closed behind him and her opportunity had passed.

An hour afterwards, when the house was quiet and the servants nowhere about, Harriet Hamlin slipped cautiously downstairs.  She was gone only a few minutes.  But when she came back to her own room, she opened a private drawer in her bureau and hid something in it.  Harriet then threw herself on her bed and lay for a long time with her eyes wide open, staring straight ahead of her.

Just before midnight, when she heard the gay voices of her friends returning from the theater, and when Ruth tripped softly to her bedroom, Harriet lay with closed eyes, apparently fast asleep.

The next morning Harriet was really ill.  Her hand trembled so while she poured the breakfast coffee that she spilled some of it on the tablecloth.  When Mr. Hamlin spoke to her sharply she burst into tears and left the room, leaving her father ashamed of himself, and the “Automobile Girls” so embarrassed that they ate the rest of their breakfast in painful silence.  Ruth did dart one indignant glance at her uncle, which Mr. Hamlin saw, but did not in his heart resent.

Harriet was willing, that morning, to have Ruth come into her darkened bedroom and sit by her bed.  For Harriet’s wakeful night had left her slightly feverish.

“I don’t want to disturb you, Harriet,” Bab apologized, coming softly to the door.  “But some one has just telephoned for you.  The person at the telephone has a message for you, but whoever it is refuses to give his name.  What shall I do!”

Harriet sat up in bed, quickly, a hunted expression on her beautiful face.  “Tell Mr. Peter Dillon that I will keep my word,” Harriet answered angrily.  “He is not to worry about me again.”

“Is that your message?” Bab queried wonderingly.  “It was not Mr. Dillon’s voice.”

Harriet laughed hysterically.  “Of course not!” she returned.  “Oh, I know you girls are wondering why I am behaving so strangely.  And I am breaking my word to tell you.  But I must tell some one.  I don’t care what Mrs. Wilson and Peter Dillon say, I know I can trust you.  I have decided to help Mrs. Wilson and Peter play their silly joke on Father and the State Department!  Oh, you needn’t look so horrified, girls.  It is only a joke.  The papers are about some Chinese business.  I have them hid in my bureau drawer.”